


Justice, Mozzie Style

by elrhiarhodan



Category: White Collar
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Friendship, Gen, Justice, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3440723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moz should have been grateful to Philip Kramer, but not when his friend was hurting so badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Theatregirl7299](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theatregirl7299/gifts).



> Written for my Purimgifts target, theatregirl7299 for the second night of Purim. This fic celebrates the triumph over evil viziers.

Moz supposed that he should have been grateful to Philip Kramer. Without his interference, Neal would have gotten his sentence commuted, he would have stayed the obedient little pet of the FBI, and he would have eventually told Moz to take a hike. 

If Kramer hadn't screwed everything up for Neal, Neal never would have cut his tracker and they never would have left New York for the legally salubrious and extradition-free shores of Cape Verde.

But Mozzie wasn't so blinded by his self-interest that he couldn't see what Kramer's machinations had done to his friend. Neal wanted his freedom, but he didn't want to have to give up everything he'd come to love for it. That was why Neal had told him that he wasn't going to run when he'd delivered that ultimatum.

Yes, they had an enviable lifestyle here in Praia: Neal's seaside villa with the perfect light, his own mountaintop fortress. They had security. They had money. Neal had a good tailor, a good haberdasher, and a pretty café owner to flirt with. Still, Moz could see the loneliness in his eyes, the longing for everything he'd been forced to leave behind. James Maine was very polished and smiled a lot, much like Neal Caffrey had in the weeks and months after Kate had been killed. 

He had his own interests, too. Barry Sotero spent a few days a week organizing the local workers, helping them in their fight for a living wage. But truthfully, the locals resented his interference and he knew he was doing more harm than good. Most of his days – at least the days when he wasn't with Neal – were spent researching the life and times of Special Agent Philip Arthur Kramer, head of the D.C. Art Crimes Unit and all-around asshole.

Agent Kramer was an _éminence grise_ of the French Impressionist movement, an expert on some of the most minute of minutia. As testaments to his reputation, he'd published monographs on the iron nails that Edouard Manet preferred to use when securing his canvases to their stretchers, the structure of _craquelure_ in the later works of Degas (and how ironic that was), and influence of Renaissance architectural theory in the shadows of Monet's Haystack paintings.

Moz could appreciate such attention to detail. Those monographs were cogent, well-written, and boring enough to put an insomniac to sleep.

They were also quite heavily plagiarized.

Whole swaths of the piece about nineteenth century nails were copied without attribution from an article published four decades ago in an obscure Italian scholarly journal. The university that owned that journal had been swallowed by an international conglomerate and been closed. There were, maybe, a dozen copies of that particular edition of the periodical still in existence. One just happened to be in Mozzie's personal collection back in New York. 

Sally had the keys and the codes to the temperature and humidity controlled storage unit where it was kept and she sent him scans of the article. She also tracked down the author's heirs and let them know that their late father's work had been stolen by an FBI agent.

Moz wasn't surprised to discover similar "problems" with Kramer's other two monographs; and to Moz's great joy, he'd been quite brazen with his borrowing on his last work. About seventy percent of the piece about Monet's Haystack paintings was stolen, word for word from the report of a 1949 colloquium about light and shadow in Monet's series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, as published by the Warburg Institute.

A copy of Kramer's monograph, his CV, and the proceedings of the colloquium were sent to the Institute's director, who lodged a complaint with anyone who would listen, including the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, an old acquaintance from his university days. The ambassador just happened to be on good speaking terms with the Director of the FBI. 

Who didn't particularly like Philip Kramer.

It was unfortunate, though, that Kramer had set his pet Rottweiler, Kyle Collins, onto Neal's trail before the Director could ask for Kramer's resignation. It was even more unfortunate that Neal got shot before Kramer's resignation could take effect.

However, Moz was able to take no small amount of joy in working with the Suit to bring down that son of a bitch, Henry Dobbs – also known as Robert McLeish – who had taken their money and betrayed them.

Moz lingered for a week in Praia after the Suit took Neal home, cleaning up the bits and pieces that he didn't want to leave behind. Without Neal looking over his shoulder, Moz cheerfully finished destroying Philip Kramer's life, such as it was.

He didn't empty Kramer's bank accounts – they weren’t worth the effort; Moz just wrecked his credit score. Thanks to Sally, he was able to post a few off-color comments on Kramer's social media accounts as Kramer himself (the old man was surprisingly active on Facebook and Twitter). Nothing over the top, but remarkably indiscreet for a decorated (and soon-to-be former) FBI agent. 

Just enough to finish demolishing his vaunted reputation.

By the time Moz returned to New York and did the whole shoemaker's elf thing for the Suit, Philip Arthur Kramer's name was ruined, his reputation toxic. It was an unlooked for, but wholly appreciated bonus to his good works, that The Powers That Be – the ones who held Peter's fate in the palms of their hands – now considered anything that Kramer had to say, especially with regards to Peter Burke and Neal Caffrey, to be less than worthless.

There were moments when Moz regretted taking Kramer down, like when Neal toasted the Suit's return to the White Collar division, saying that he'd like to be more like Peter Burke. In Moz's opinion, Neal was already too much like the Suit for his peace of mind. 

Fixing that was his next project.

FIN


	2. Chapter 2




End file.
